Chapter 7 Thorn
It’s a relief when we’re off those damn steps.
That’s the closest I’ve ever come to someone actually having an incident there, and it’s more than a little terrifying to think about what could have happened if I hadn’t been able to save her.
Sadie’s going to be the reason for a number of edits to the tour company’s packing guidelines, but HIKING BOOTS MANDATORY will surely be the most significant.
This path is more uneven than the one we left behind in Valerie Forest, covered in little white rocks that don’t exactly provide stability underfoot, but I’ll take it.
There’s little chance Sadie—or anyone else, for that matter—will have another life-threatening incident on what’s left of today’s hike. Not due to footwear, anyway.
“It’s really pretty out here,” Sadie says quietly, pulling me out of my head after we’ve been walking for a while in silence. She’s found her way to my side; the rest of the group is a good bit ahead of us, with Matteo leading the way.
“It is,” I agree. From this vantage point, you can see Helen Theresa Peak and the Two Sisters off to the distant south, and a sprawling landscape of rocks and treetops filling everything in between.
A huge reason I do what I do is to get people to pay attention to this sort of beauty: what the world has to offer that isn’t just shown on a screen, in air conditioning, with all the comforts a person might crave at their fingertips—distractions, everywhere.
All of this, though, requires me to bring clueless people out of their comfort zones. It’s not my favorite thing at the beginning of a trek, but by the end—
That is what keeps me coming back to lead again and again.
I glance down at Sadie’s dirty white shoes, then up her long, toned legs. She strikes me as a treadmill person.
“So what made you want to sign up for something like this?” I ask.
I’m genuinely perplexed. I thought I knew her type from the moment I laid eyes on her—a lot of which has played out exactly as I expected so far. That said, people like Sadie don’t often sign up for these things on their own; they’re usually dragged by a boyfriend or a best friend or a boss.
Or, like Zoe, outright lied to.
“The treacherous rocks, clearly,” she says, and I laugh. “And also the bugs.”
As if on cue, a mosquito lands on her arm; she slaps it away.
I size her up, determine she needs just a little roasting. She’s making a joke like that, this soon after she almost fell from said treacherous rocks? She can take it.
“So which was it?” I ask. “Eat Pray Love or Wild?”
I’d put money on it that at least one of those books is hiding at the bottom of that overstuffed pack right this minute.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says—but the way she tries to hide her smile tells me everything.
I knew it.
“So you didn’t wake up one morning after reading some sort of woman-needs-emotional-cleanse-after-hitting-rock-bottom book and decide you needed to do the same thing?”
She glances down at the uneven trail, concentrating hard so she doesn’t trip.
“Okay, fine,” she admits, her single dimple popping as she grins. “Emotional cleanse, yes. But no to rock bottom.”
I want to ask more about that—why she felt the need for an emotional cleanse at all—because I can relate to that, unfortunately, even if I personally believe books like Eat Pray Love have sent more women home on crutches than with a healed heart.
Probably best to keep a professional distance, though.
“Are you some sort of influencer?” I ask instead. “Is that why you’re always on your phone?”
She scoffs. “I am not ‘always on my phone,’ ” she protests, air quotes and all. “I’ve hardly looked at it all day!”
“Sure,” I say, giving her a hard time even though she’s right—she hasn’t had it out as much as yesterday. I can’t resist digging in a little, though. “Is that why I was woken up this morning by the sweet sounds of you talking to yourself inside your tent?”
She stops in her tracks, and the look on her face is priceless.
“Whoever Caden O’Connor is,” I go on, because I really can’t help it—Sadie was not expecting this, and seeing her flustered is a nice change from the way she’s been trying to hold herself together out here, “he sounds like an asshole. Screw that guy.”
I’m not sure if she wants to high-five me or slap me—for a split second, it looks like she’s torn between both options.
No, yeah, she definitely wants to slap me.
“You eavesdropped on me?!” she says, eyebrows raised to their limits.
“Believe me, it wasn’t on purpose.”
“Caden O’Connor is an asshole,” she mutters, but leaves it at that.
We’ve finally managed to close the gap between us and the rest of the group, just in time to hear Zoe ask, “Are we there yet?”
Joshua glances over his shoulder with an apologetic look. “Sorry, man,” he says. “Zoe isn’t used to this much walking.”
Zoe swats his chest. “Babe. No. I’m just starving, that’s all.”
Why do people think a trek in the Sierras will be an easy walk in the park? We’re out here for days on end. It’s really not something you should casually decide to do unless you’re willing to put in the work.
Then again, it sounds like Zoe didn’t get to make that choice for herself.
“We’re about an hour’s walk from our campsite for the night,” I offer, “but if you need to rest—”
“I just need a snack,” Zoe interrupts, cutting a glare at Joshua. “I’m fine! Fine.”
One of the tennis team girls—Brittany, the one with the long blonde ponytail braid and a paint-splattered visor—pulls a protein bar from her pack and hands it over.
“Oh…” Zoe says as she waves it away. “Thanks, but I’m allergic to peanuts.”
“She’s not allergic,” Joshua adds flatly. “She just doesn’t like them. You’ve got to stop saying that, babe, it’s insensitive to people with real allergies.”
“I’m sensitive,” she protests. “They make me break out.”
“But they won’t, like, make you die,” he says, losing patience. “I really think you should eat something—”
“I have roasted pumpkin seeds if you’d like some?” Sadie cuts in, pulling a snack-sized Ziploc bag from one of the zippered pockets of her backpack.
Zoe’s face melts in relief. “Yes, please! You’re a lifesaver.”
I glance around the group and catch the tail end of an eye roll from Brittany as she stuffs the rejected protein bar back in her pack.
“So we’re good, then?” I ask. “One more hour?”
No one speaks up—so I take that as an all-clear.
The sun dips lower over the horizon, and we make steady progress.
It’s still late afternoon, but we’ll need to have a smooth crossing at Cloverleaf Creek if we don’t want to set up camp in the dark.
We’re finally at the portion of the path that follows the curve of the creek, a quarter-mile stretch that eventually forks off in two directions: the left fork leads to another set of cliffs and small lakes, and the right—when water levels allow—leads straight to our campsite.
We should have no problem crossing the creek tonight. There’ve only been two times I’ve ever seen it impassable, and while it’s rained more than usual over the last few months, we aren’t freshly off any torrential downpours. At its highest, the water is shin deep.
“Aww, sick—we get to wade through that?” Trey says when we’re all gathered at the edge, his eyes sparking excitedly.
“We have to wade through that?!” Zoe exclaims, horrified. “Where’s the bridge?”
“You can wade through if you want,” I say, more to Trey than to Zoe. “This water’s calm enough—but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want your shoes to be soaking wet. For everyone who’d like to stay as dry as possible, there’s a natural rock bridge.”
A few of the rocks are jagged and angular, and one is a bit of a stretch to reach, but otherwise they’re flat and smooth—it’s a challenge of balance more than anything else, stepping carefully from one rock to the next.
“Pray for me,” Sadie says with a grimace, glancing down at her shoes. “Can I just go barefoot?”
“Even riskier that way, unfortunately,” I tell her.
Matteo demonstrates the most efficient way to cross, hopping from stone to stone like he’s on American Ninja Warrior.
Not everyone is so light on their feet. Hunter struggles—his height comes in handy for making long strides over the water, but his balance isn’t the best. Silas manages just fine; Trey doesn’t even bother with the rocks and trudges straight through the water.
He offers a hand to Zoe—Joshua made it across with no issues, leaving her behind to fend for herself—while Brittany, Emma, and Parker look like pros.
Sadie, at the back of the pack, is reluctant to step out.
I don’t blame her, after what happened this morning—but we’re the last two waiting to cross, and we’re losing daylight quickly.
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
It takes effort to sound patient. I’m not sure I do sound patient.
She bites her lip, eyeing the rocks warily. “Sorry, sorry. I can do this.”
“You can,” I agree, trying my best not to scare off her sudden surge of bravery. “I’ll be right behind you. It’s not deep—all that’s at risk here are wet shoes.”
That’s not exactly true—she could slip and hurt herself, in theory, if she were out here on her own—but I’m more than capable of preventing a dangerous fall. I’ll steady her before anything like that comes close to happening.
She swallows, nods. “Okay. Okay, I’m going.”
I don’t believe it until the toe of her sneaker makes contact with the first rock—but it does, and she’s solid, confidence already higher than before. She glances over her shoulder to smile at me, but wobbles just a little.
“Eyes ahead, not on me!” I instruct, a little more drill sergeant than I intend.
She listens, though, and makes her way to the next rock with ease.
I follow, one step behind.
“You can do it, Sadie!” Trey calls, ever the hype guy. “You’ve got this!”
It’s smooth going until we get to the first jagged rock, its surface jutting out of the water at a thirty-degree angle.
“The trick with this one is to go quickly,” I coach her. “Don’t plan to stop on it—just put one foot on, then push off to the flat one right after it, okay?”
She nods, her entire focus on the rocks. We’re so close. Three more rocks after the trickiest one and we’ll join the rest of the group.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Parker calls out, to everyone’s surprise; she’s been the quietest of the three tennis girls so far. “Don’t think about what could go wrong—just picture it going right.”
It’s great advice, and it works.
Sadie takes a deep breath, pushes off from one rock to another, then powers straight through the rest. Parker and Trey bury her in a hug when she’s safely across; Emma and Brittany join in, too.
When Sadie finally pulls away, she turns to me, beaming.
No one has looked at me like that in a long, long time. It’s a smile so open, so sincere, so unguarded—so personal, reminding me I’m a person, too, and not just the leader on the outside whose sole purpose is to get everyone from place to place.
Sometimes I forget that.
Sadie’s smile stirs something in me, and it scares me: my first instinct is to push it away.
The last person to look at me like that was Blair, and she ran off with Matteo to Peru…
so…yeah. There’ve been other nice people along the way, of course, but they always leave and never look back.
It’s become a habit of mine to not get close in the first place.
I swallow, keeping my face neutral as I give her my most professional nod of approval.
Falling for one of my trekkers is the last thing I need out here—it’s against the rules, for one.
I also simply can’t afford to be distracted.
What would have happened to Sadie today on those slippery steps if I hadn’t been alert enough to spring into action?
Nothing good, that’s for sure.
For her best interest and mine, I should probably keep my distance.
“Ready to head out?” Matteo says, addressing the rest of the group—but not me. Never me, not the entire time we’ve been out here.
One by one, they fall in line behind him. Sadie lets the others go first, hanging back to wait for me, and gives me another smile even brighter than the first.
“Thanks for today, Thorn,” she says, that cute dimple popping once again.
That’s when I know I’m in trouble.